Belgium
An unidentified former student arrives at the Sint Lambertus school. A bus carrying Belgian tourists crashed into the wall of a tunnel in Sierre in the Valais region of Switzerland, killing 28 people, 22 of them children, police said on Wednesday. The bus was transporting 52 people, mostly school children from Heverlee and Lommel in Flanders. (via Reuters.com)
Belgium mourns children who died in Swiss Alps coach crash – video
Family members of the crash victims and the Belgian prime minister, Elio Di Rupo, arrive in the town of Sion, near the crash site in the Swiss Alps, while mourners in Belgium lay flowers outside a school attended by many of the children, and the country’s archbishop says mass to mourners in the town of Leuven. Twenty-eight Dutch and Belgian citizens, including 22 children, died in the accident on Tuesday. (via The Guardian)
Sierre, Switzerland
The wreckage of a bus after it crashed inside a motorway tunnel. Twenty-eight people, including 22 children returning from a skiing holiday, died in a bus accident. (via Telegraph)
Liège shooting and grenade attack: previous European incidents in last 10 years
The shootings in the eastern Belgian city of Liege and Florence, Italy, on Tuesday have several precedents over the past 10 years in Europe. (via Telegraph)
Leeds, UK
Tributes to former footballer Gary Speed are laid outside Leeds United’s ground, Elland Road. Tributes have been pouring in after the 42-year-old was found dead at his home in Chester on Sunday morning. It is understood he was found hanged. Friends and colleagues of Gary Speed say they cannot understand the events leading to the Wales manager’s death (via BBC News)
UK: Gary Speed: ‘Devastation’ over Wales manager’s death
Family, friends and the football world are trying to come to terms with the death of Wales manager Gary Speed.
Tributes continue to pour in after the 42-year-old was found dead at his home in Chester on Sunday morning. It is understood he was found hanged.
Former team-mate John Hartson said the death had left him “devastated”.
Fans paid tribute at Sunday’s Swansea-Aston Villa game when a minute’s silence turned into applause.
Figures across the world of football have expressed their shock at the death of Speed, who leaves a wife and two children. (via BBC News)
Russia plane crash navigator was ‘lightly intoxicated’
The navigator of a Russian airliner that crashed in June killing 47 people was “in a light level of alcoholic intoxication”, an official report has said.
A Tu-134 jet belonging to the airline RusAir hit a road a mile short of the runway at Petrozavodsk airport in north-west Russia on 20 June. Five people survived.
Russia’s interstate aviation committee, which oversees civil aviation in the country and several other former Soviet republics, said the “use during the flight of a navigator in a light level of alcoholic intoxication” was one of a number of factors that had contributed to the crash.
Other factors were heavy fog and poor co-operation among the crew during the landing attempt. The investigation showed that the crew could not see the runway’s ground lights, but did not decide to turn away and make another attempt at landing.
The report said that the pilot had subordinated himself to the navigator with the co-pilot effectively excluded from decisions.
State television channel Rossiya said experts believe the navigator, who was among those killed in the crash, had consumed about a glass of vodka shortly before the flight took off from Moscow.
Russia and other former Soviet republics have had poor air safety records in recent years. Industry experts say the air disasters are rooted not simply in flying older aircraft, but in poor crew training, crumbling airports, lax government controls and widespread neglect of safety in the pursuit of profits. (via The Guardian)
Ercis, Turkey
A girl carries an umbrella at a camp for people displaced by an earthquake, near the eastern Turkish city of Van (via Reuters.com)
Ercis, Turkey
Yunus, 13, waits with another earthquake survivor to be rescued from a collapsed building (via guardian.co.uk)
Turkey earthquake – in pictures
As many as 1,000 people are feared dead after a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit south-eastern Turkey, destroying dozens of buildings and trapping some victims alive under the rubble (via guardian.co.uk)
The Cathedral of the Annunciation in Moscow by marantzer on Flickr.
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